Model Revolution

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Model revolution is the fourth step of the Kuhn Cycle. In this step a field's model of understanding is undergoing revolutionary change. The old model failed, which caused the Model Crisis step. The Model Revolution step begins when one or more competing new models emerge from the crisis.

This step is a revolution because the old model is usually so entrenched into the mental habits and even the lifestyles of those using it that a new way of thinking is incomprehensible and/or unacceptable, at least at first. The Model Revolution step could also be called The Search for a New Model That Works step. The length of this step is best minimized if the consequences to failing to find a new model in time are catastrophic. Unless this step is driven by an appropriate process it is almost always rocky, unnecessarily slow, and unpredictable.

Why understanding the Model Revolution step is important

This step is routine in science, where the Model Revolution step is welcomed. Debate sprawls across peer reviewed journal articles, conferences, talks, and conversations. Healthy unselfish debate and cooperative exploration has always generated the single new model a field needs. When this occurs, the Model Revolution step is complete and the next step begins.

This step is not routine when the model is not that of a field, but of a culture or a model of government. When those new models compete people have a lot to lose. They can lose most of their assets or their life, as has happened in thousands of violent revolutions and wars. The Model Revolution step is thus fraught with danger when social control models are at stake. A social control model is a collection of rules describing how a unit of society works.

That the sustainability problem exists is evidence that the world's social control models have failed. Here the model is government and its many laws. Several things in that model are deeply flawed and must be changed. But historically, deep changes to government have required revolutions, some mild, and some not.

The Two Requirements for Successful Model Revolution

Thomas Kuhn argued that the heart of why a new paradigm is accepted depends on two requirements:

First, the new candidate must seem to resolve some outstanding and generally recognized problem that can be met in no other way. Second, the new paradigm must promise to preserve a relatively large part of the concrete problem solving activity that has accrued to science through its predecessors. 1

The essence of the new paradigm promoted by Thwink.org is that the process must fit the problem. The System Improvement Process (SIP) is presented as an example of a better fit. SIP satisfies the two requirements described by Kuhn, and thus has the potential to cause the new paradigm to be swiftly accepted.

The first requirement is that "the new candidate must seem to resolve some outstanding and generally recognized problem that can be met in no other way." The outstanding problem of environmental activism is that despite decades of work and mountains of proof that civilization should change course, it has not. The new paradigm resolves this by introduction of the proposition that change resistance is the reason for this, and that if systemic changer resistance is analyzed as a separate problem it will quickly yield to root cause analysis, which will reveal deep solutions which have never been tried and have a high probability of success.

The second requirement is that "the new paradigm must promise to preserve a relatively large part of the concrete problem solving activity that has accrued to science through its predecessors." SIP accomplishes this by the concept of the proper coupling subproblem. The Normal Science of environmentalism considers proper coupling to be the problem to solve. SIP views it as merely one of three subproblems: how to overcome change resistance, how to achieve proper coupling, and how to avoid avoid excessive model drift. This decomposition preserves the "relatively large part of the concrete problem solving activity" that centers on proper coupling.

In other words, once environmentalists use the new insight that change resistance is the crux of the problem, then after it's overcome they can return to what they have been doing for so long: addressing the proper coupling part of the problem.

Thus the new paradigm is not that big a change after all. It's evolutionary rather than revolutionary.

This the most famous and influential Model Revolution of them all. It marked the fall of the church's influence on the source of all knowledge, and the ascendance of scientific observation and experimentation via the Scientific Method as the only reliable source of new knowledge.

The old paradigm held that the earth was the center of the universe. The stars, planets, and the moon all revolved around the earth. That was obvious so it was true.

In 1543 Copernicus published On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres. In it he laid out the new paradigm. In it the earth was a planet itself. The planets revolved around the sun. The stars were stationary and appeared to move, but actually it was the earth's daily revolutions that caused that.

It took only 143 years for the new heliocentric model to be accepted. The model of understanding behind the Copernican Revolution became complete when Sir Isaac Newton provided an explanation of how the planets were kept in their orbits by the force of gravity in his Principia in 1687.

How long will it take for Model Revolution to complete for the sustainability problem?

Are you as concerned as we are about the rise of populust authoritarians like Donald Trump? Have you noticed that democracy is unable to solve important problems like climate change, war, and poverty? If so this film series is for you!

Why is democracy in crisis? One intermediate cause is a weakened Voter Feedback Loop. Powerful root cause forces are working to weaken the loop.

The most eye-opening article on the site since it was written in December 2005. More people have contacted us about this easy to read paper and the related Dueling Loops videos than anything else on the site.

Do you every wonder why the sustainability problem is so impossibly hard to solve? It's because of the phenomenon of change resistance. The system itself, and not just individual social agents, is strongly resisting change. Why this is so, its root causes, and several potential solutions are presented.

The analysis was performed over a seven year period from 2003 to 2010. The results are summarized in the Summary of Analysis Results, the top of which is shown below:

Click on the table for the full table and a high level discussion of analysis results.

The Universal Causal Chain

This is the solution causal chain present in all problems. Popular approaches to solving the sustainability problem see only what's obvious: the black arrows. This leads to using superficial solutions to push on low leverage points to resolve intermediate causes.

Popular solutions are superficial because they fail to see into the fundamental layer, where the complete causal chain runs to root causes. It's an easy trap to fall into because it intuitively seems that popular solutions like renewable energy and strong regulations should solve the sustainability problem. But they can't, because they don't resolve the root causes.

In the analytical approach, root cause analysis penetrates the fundamental layer to find the well hidden red arrow. Further analysis finds the blue arrow.Fundamental solution elements are then developed to create the green arrow which solves the problem. For more see Causal Chain in the glossary.

This is no different from what the ancient Romans did. It’s a strategy of divide and conquer. Subproblems like these are several orders of magnitude easier to solve because you are no longer trying (in vain) to solve them simultaneously without realizing it. This strategy has changed millions of other problems from insolvable to solvable, so it should work here too.

For example, multiplying 222 times 222 in your head is for most of us impossible. But doing it on paper, decomposing the problem into nine cases of 2 times 2 and then adding up the results, changes the problem from insolvable to solvable.

Change resistance is the tendency for a system to resist change even when a surprisingly large amount of force is applied.

Overcoming change resistance is the crux of the problem, because if the system is resisting change then none of the other subproblems are solvable. Therefore this subproblem must be solved first. Until it is solved, effort to solve the other three subproblems is largely wasted effort.

The root cause of successful change resistance appears to be effective deception in the political powerplace. Too many voters and politicians are being deceived into thinking sustainability is a low priority and need not be solved now.

The high leverage point for resolving the root cause is to raise general ability to detect political deception. We need to inoculate people against deceptive false memes because once people are infected by falsehoods, it’s very hard to change their minds to see the truth.

Life form improper coupling occurs when two social life forms are not working together in harmony.

In the sustainability problem, large for-profit corporations are not cooperating smoothly with people. Instead, too many corporations are dominating political decision making to their own advantage, as shown by their strenuous opposition to solving the environmental sustainability problem.

The root cause appears to be mutually exclusive goals. The goal of the corporate life form is maximization of profits, while the goal of the human life form is optimization of quality of life, for those living and their descendents. These two goals cannot be both achieved in the same system. One side will win and the other side will lose. Guess which side is losing?

The high leverage point for resolving the root cause follows easily. If the root cause is corporations have the wrong goal, then the high leverage point is to reengineer the modern corporation to have the right goal.

The world’s solution model for solving important problems like sustainability, recurring wars, recurring recessions, excessive economic inequality, and institutional poverty has drifted so far it’s unable to solve the problem.

The root cause appears to be low quality of governmental political decisions. Various steps in the decision making process are not working properly, resulting in inability to proactively solve many difficult problems.

This indicates low decision making process maturity. The high leverage point for resolving the root cause is to raise the maturity of the political decision making process.

In the environmental proper coupling subproblem the world’s economic system is improperly coupled to the environment. Environmental impact from economic system growth has exceeded the capacity of the environment to recycle that impact.

This subproblem is what the world sees as the problem to solve. The analysis shows that to be a false assumption, however. The change resistance subproblem must be solved first.

The root cause appears to be high transaction costs for managing common property (like the air we breath). This means that presently there is no way to manage common property efficiently enough to do it sustainably.

The high leverage point for resolving the root cause is to allow new types of social agents (such as new types of corporations) to appear, in order to radically lower transaction costs.

Solutions

There must be a reason popular solutions are not working.

Given the principle that all causal problems arise from their root causes, the reason popular solutions are not working (after over 40 years of millions of people trying) is popular solutions do not resolve root causes.

This is Thwink.org’s most fundamental insight.

Summary of Solution Elements

Using the results of the analysis as input, 12 solutions elements were developed. Each resolves a specific root cause and thus solves one of the four subproblems, as shown below:

Click on the table for a high level discussion of the solution elements and to learn how you can hit the bullseye.

The 4 Subproblems

The solutions you are about to see differ radically from popular solutions, because each resolves a specific root cause for a single subproblem. The right subproblems were found earlier in the analysis step, which decomposed the one big Gordian Knot of a problem into The Four Subproblems of the Sustainability Problem.

Everything changes with a root cause resolution approach. You are no longer firing away at a target you can’t see. Once the analysis builds a model of the problem and finds the root causes and their high leverage points, solutions are developed to push on the leverage points.

Because each solution is aimed at resolving a specific known root cause, you can't miss. You hit the bullseye every time. It's like shooting at a target ten feet away. The bullseye is the root cause. That's why Root Cause Analysis is so fantastically powerful.

The high leverage point for overcoming change resistance is to raise general ability to detect political deception. We have to somehow make people truth literate so they can’t be fooled so easily by deceptive politicians.

This will not be easy. Overcoming change resistance is the crux of the problem and must be solved first, so it takes nine solution elements to solve this subproblem. The first is the key to it all.

B. How to Achieve Life Form Proper Coupling

In this subproblem the analysis found that two social life forms, large for-profit corporations and people, have conflicting goals. The high leverage point is correctness of goals for artificial life forms. Since the one causing the problem right now is Corporatis profitis, this means we have to reengineer the modern corporation to have the right goal.

Corporations were never designed in a comprehensive manner to serve the people. They evolved. What we have today can be called Corporation 1.0. It serves itself. What we need instead is Corporation 2.0. This life form is designed to serve people rather than itself. Its new role will be that of a trusted servant whose goal is providing the goods and services needed to optimize quality of life for people in a sustainable manner.

What’s drifted too far is the decision making model that governments use to decide what to do. It’s incapable of solving the sustainability problem.

The high leverage point is to greatly improve the maturity of the political decision making process. Like Corporation 1.0, the process was never designed. It evolved. It’s thus not quite what we want.

The solution works like this: Imagine what it would be like if politicians were rated on the quality of their decisions. They would start competing to see who could improve quality of life and the common good the most. That would lead to the most pleasant Race to the Top the world has ever seen.

Presently the world’s economic system is improperly coupled to the environment. The high leverage point is allow new types of social agents to appear to radically reduce the cost of managing the sustainability problem.

This can be done with non-profit stewardship corporations. Each steward would have the goal of sustainably managing some portion of the sustainability problem. Like the way corporations charge prices for their goods and services, stewards would charge fees for ecosystem service use. The income goes to solving the problem.

Corporations gave us the Industrial Revolution. That revolution is incomplete until stewards give us the Sustainability Revolution.

This analyzes the world’s standard political system and explains why it’s operating for the benefit of special interests instead of the common good. Several sample solutions are presented to help get you thwinking.

Note how generic most of the tools/concepts are. They apply to far more than the sustainability problem. Thus the glossary is really The Problem Solver's Guide to Difficult Social System Problems, using the sustainability problem as a running example.